The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a survey-based tool launched in 2012, has been widely used to measure and understand women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was originally designed as a monitoring and evaluation tool for the Feed the Future Initiative (FTF), and has been rolled-out in 19 FTF focus countries. Since then, the WEAI has undergone subsequent rounds of testing and refinement, including a shorter, more streamlined version (the Abbreviated WEAI or A-WEAI), a project-level version suited for different types of agricultural interventions (Project-level WEAI or Pro-WEAI), and a version adapted for measuring empowerment across the value chain (WEAI for Value Chains or WEAI4VC). This webinar will provide an overview of the tool, and take stock of what we’re learning so far on women’s empowerment in agriculture based on results from the FTF surveys, ongoing pilot studies, and other analyses using WEAI data.

The session will begin with an overview of the WEAI tool and the different modifications currently under development, including the pro-WEAI and WEAI4VC. We will briefly discuss how the index is constructed, the different domains and indicators that are measured in the tool, and how these indicators have evolved across the different types of WEAIs. Next, we will present a snapshot of the FTF interim results, highlights from the pro-WEAI and WEAI4VC surveys, and some preliminary findings from a cross-country study on the linkages between different dimensions of women’s empowerment and nutrition outcomes. We will conclude with some suggestions on how the tool can be applied to future projects, and what implications for policy and practice can be drawn from context-specific findings as well as general lessons learned across regions.